Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) (16 page)

She texted Taj an update, hoping the spotty cell towers between here and the
haveli
were feeling charitable, and settled back in her uncomfortable bamboo chair. From across the room, her mother and Nina looked like two peas in a pod—fashionably coiffed heads bent close, one fair and one dark, each of them dressed to the nines in designer dresses and shoes. They looked like the proverbial ladies who lunch. No doubt Caroline had gotten Nina welcomed back into all kinds of expensive boutiques.

“What do you imagine they’re speaking of?” Like her, Kamal was intently focused…and, like her, he was vaguely appalled by the whole scenario.

“Clothes, shopping, men?” she suggested. She and Caroline had worked out a loose script beforehand, and she had no doubt her mom could stick to it. But the shallow topics were all that she and Nina had in common. For all of Rocky’s visions of Mom as some vapid Ugly American who spent her life at the spa, she was leaps and bounds more human than that
thing
masquerading as a woman.

“Men.” Kamal repeated the word softly, as a statement and not a question. “Ashraf.” This too was a matter of fact. “Ashraf was just a boy when they met first. A
boy
.”

His disgust was palpable. So arresting that she actually stopped watching her mom for a moment so she could try and piece together his puzzle.

That,
of course
, was when shit went down.

“You
bitch
!” Just like it had in the library, her mother’s voice carried like that of a veteran stage actress. “That is a vicious
lie
!” she cried, rising from her chair and throwing down her napkin. “I trusted you,” she was saying, as Nina scrambled from her own seat in alarm. “I took you in as a
friend
. And you’ve been telling people that my daughter…that my daughter is…” Her shuddering breath was a melodramatic thing of beauty.

“
Nahin
!
Nahin
! Caroline…Caroline,
stop
this.” Nina was trying to wrest control of the scene, to imbue her voice with menace.

But all eyes were on Mom, the lone white woman in the room. “I know what you are, Nina Manjrekar. I know what you did in Mumbai. To that poor family. Don’t you
dare
think you can get away with that here,” she raged. Rocky half-expected her to bite her knuckles. She had to bite her own to stop from laughing at the image.

Kamal wasn’t as amused. He was leaning forward, hands knotted so tightly his knuckles stood out in sharp relief.

Nina’s red lips were similar hard bumps. “Caroline, you know I have in my possession—”

“Connections?” Caroline swiftly interrupted before she could mention the dirty photos of Ashraf. She swept her arm wide, encompassing the entire room. “Do you really think you still have
any
weapons? Who is going to listen to you? Who
here
is going to help
you
?”

Chairs shifted again. Eyes averted. People actually bit
into
the kebabs they’d been poking at just minutes earlier. Delhi society closed ranks.

And when her mom’s arm came back around, she just
happened
to knock into a glass of wine. The goblet took off like a shotput, arcing red liquid all across the front of Nina’s expensive designer suit before falling to the ground and shattering.

“Oh.” Caroline blinked, all innocent eyes and distress. But she didn’t apologize. Or move to help the other woman with the spreading stain.

It was kind of amazing. But not as amazing as watching Nina Manjrekar’s face crumple like a wet tissue. Moments later, even as she cried, protested and resorted to calling Caroline all
kinds
of unprintable Hindi names—Rocky would have to ask Taj what they all meant—the hostess and the manager calmly escorted her out the door. Her outraged threats and wails lingered for only a minute or two before getting lost in the din of the bistro returning to business as usual.

Her mom just sat back down, put her napkin in her lap, and gestured for a waiter.

Rocky almost wanted to applaud. Except… “But she said she still has photos…” Kamal made a low sound that was either a laugh or a growl. If it was the latter, he’d probably caught the habit from Taj like a communicable disease. But his hands weren’t tensed anymore. No, he actually relaxed them, palms flat on the tabletop. “Okay, spill it,” she demanded. “What did you do?”

He shrugged one elegant shoulder. “During the half an hour she and your mother were shopping, I was shopping as well. For insurance. Her computer, her second mobile and the last paper copies are
also
in my boot.”

“
What
?”

Kamal just slid his mirrored sunglasses down and let her stare at her own dropped jaw.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Caroline Varma was a beautiful woman. He’d known many in his time; he could still objectively make that distinction. Rocky shared many of her features—her slim build and short height—but Caroline was a full
gori
, blond and white and fair and lovely. Were she twenty years younger, someone would have snapped her up for an item song or a big, splashy
masala
number.

“Mr. Khan,” she called him now, as if he were a schoolteacher or a solicitor. “I want to talk to you about my daughter.”

He’d known she would, sooner or later. Though they had become compatriots of sorts while taking care of Nina, they were clearly adversaries once more. Ashu had been home barely one night, and the truce was broken. “So I was mistaken in thinking you would ask me about my roses?”

She was not amused. And, like her daughter, she did not rise to the bait.
Nahin
, she was all business, sitting down across from him as she’d, no doubt, sat across from Nina two days prior.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at with her, but the last thing Rocky needs in her life right now is some antisocial has-been who never leaves his house. What kind of life can you give her? I know my Rocky. She’s had to face a lot, growing up in an interracial, interfaith household…and, trust me, it was no picnic for any of us. She never let any of that faze her. She has the most open heart in the world, and she will stick by you no matter what. But the world isn’t that kind, Mr. Khan. All they’ll see when they look at the two of you is Beauty and the Beast. Is that what you want for her? A lifetime of whispers and pity?”

“I think you’re gorgeous, Taj…and I just want everyone to see what I do.”

It was not what he wanted for her. More than that, it was not what he wanted for them together.

The doors to Taj’s bedroom were wide open. Teasing her. Saying, “Come over the threshold, little girl,” like the spider to the fly. It was the middle of the day. Usha was leading a parade of sweeping girls through the
haveli
like an army battalion. It just wouldn’t be smart. So Rocky was trying her best to ignore the devious voices. When Taj set down the TV remote and turned to her, it was a
very
welcome distraction.

“How good is your cinema history, Rakhee?”
His
voice was no less devious, pouring out her given name like a slow spill of honey. But there was an ominous note in there, too, that instantly straightened her spine. “Do you know Suraiya? She fell in love with a Hindu. Her costar in many films.”

“I know. It was Dev Anand, right?” Rocky was infinitely glad for her habit of doing her movie homework, even if the lack of high-speed Internet here made it far more difficult. “He saved her from drowning and it was totally romantic. Are you implying this is a metaphor for
our
relationship because my dad is Hindu, and you’re…”

“Godless?” Taj suggested with a cynical quirk of his mouth.

“Ha-ha.” She made a face. “You don’t need to save me. I’ve never drowned. I was on swim team in high school.”

“
Nahin
. Your head is above the water.” He kissed the top, as if to punctuate the fact. “But their love was not enough. It couldn’t combat society; it could not fight her family. He proposed, but they were never allowed to marry. Soon, they were forbidden even to work together. She loved him the rest of her days, and she died an old woman alone, unwed.”

“That’s awful.” More than awful. Taj certainly had a way of collecting tragedies like other people collected stamps or porcelain dolls. “But I still don’t see why you brought this up. It’s not the 1950s anymore, and no one’s running my life.”

He stroked her hair, pushing errant strands back before taking one unruly ringlet and tugging on it. “Is that true? Do you think your father wants you to stay with me here, in the Beast’s garden?” The rhetorical questions zinged. “Will Caroline approve of me as her son-in-law? Will you ferry back and forth from here to Mumbai for every party, every function and every project? Don’t be foolish, Rakhee.
Zara socho
. Think,” he urged. “Dev Anand felt love again. He moved forward. He had a wife and a son and a long, healthy career. I’m the one who can’t swim, Rocky. I am the one who can’t fight fate. And it is you who will have to move on.”

“Wh-what?” Somewhere in the middle of his big, martyrous speech, ice replaced the blood in her veins. She slipped from his arms, backing up until her butt hit the arm of the couch. “Where is this coming from, Taj? I mean, we haven’t really talked about the future at all. I know you. You don’t even want to think about tomorrow. So, why would you even
say—
” And, just like that, Rocky knew. “Mom said something to you, didn’t she?”

“
Arré
. Stop it.” Taj grabbed her ankle, slowly tugging her back across the cushions to him. “She is worried for you. She
should
be worried for you.”

“Why are you defending her again?” She gawked at him like he was a legitimate freak show. “Why are you on her
side
?”

He hadn’t growled at her like a monster in a long time. But he did now. Frustrated and worried and hurting. “Because I am thirty-five years old and have no face, no life, and you are twenty-one and have the whole world open for your exploration.”

“Do I have to point out again that it’s not the 1950s? I’m not stuck here,” she reminded him. “Yes, I can take planes back and forth between Delhi and Bombay. Businessmen do it all the time. And I can go anywhere in the rest of the world, too…and come back and tell you all about it. Get this place wired for Internet, and I can
show
you. Did you know they’ve invented phones that take pictures and video, or do you insist on carrier pigeons as part of your whole recluse thing?”

He scowled, and it cut even deeper grooves on either side of his mouth. “It is not funny, Rocky.”

“No, it’s not, Taj.” She straddled his knees, taking his hands in hers and squeezing them tight. “It breaks my heart. I hate that you don’t think you have a future. I hate that you think I could have a future without you in it. And I hate that you think you don’t have a face. I love your face,” she whispered. “I love what’s behind it.”

He pressed his forehead against their combined fingers. “Don’t. Please…please, don’t.” It was as close to a prayer as she’d ever heard him come.

“Too late.” She snuggled closer, pressing her lips to his temple, and then to the steeple their fingertips created. “Like I said the day we met: you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

He shook with suppressed emotion. Mirth. Tears. There was no way he was allowing her to know, with his head bowed and his eye mutinously shut. “That is what I am afraid of, sweet Rocky,” was all he said. “It is precisely what I fear.”

It
wasn’t
what he needed to be afraid of.

No. What he needed to fear was the exact opposite.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It had been days, maybe weeks, since she’d found herself in the gardens. Literally. Rocky had found
herself
amid the rosebushes and flowering trees—become this happy, whole person in Taj’s arms. And being there without him felt vaguely sacrilegious. Like she was cheating on him with jasmine, betraying him with the marigolds. But it was also quiet and fragrant and open. A patch of brightness attached to a dark, still oppressive, house. Perfect for a love song with an aerial camera that spun and spun.

She breathed in. Breathed deep. And almost choked when a hand came down on her shoulder.

“Rocky
Mem
?”

Kamal’s gentle query did nothing to add the five years back on her life, and she was still off-kilter and gasping when she whirled around to face him. “Kamal! Jesus! Wear a bell, why don’t you?”

“It has been suggested before.” A faint smile tugged at the corner of his somber mouth even as his dour, dark eyes telegraphed an apology. He echoed it aloud. “So very sorry. I did not mean to startle you.”

Then what
did
he mean? Rocky still didn’t know what to make of this enigma who meant so much to Taj and Ashraf. She and Kamal had seldom spoken over the course of the past eight weeks, despite living in the same house and caring for the same men. Even after their quasi-surveillance mission at the restaurant, Kamal was almost as much a stranger now as he’d been on day one.

“Were you looking for me or something?” she wondered, once she had a decent grasp on her equilibrium. He looked like he’d just come from outside—a jacket thrown over what looked like a scrub shirt, half-tucked into a pair of jeans. No scarf this time. It was more casual than she’d ever seen him dress. And he managed to make it look like a suit of armor.

“Did you need to be found?” he countered, almost frighteningly on par with what she’d been thinking just before his interruption.